


Uncovered

by midoritakamine



Category: Ensemble Stars! (Video Game)
Genre: Brief appearance by Nagisa, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-18
Updated: 2017-12-18
Packaged: 2019-02-16 13:34:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13055019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/midoritakamine/pseuds/midoritakamine
Summary: Ibara cleans out his and Nagisa's closet.





	Uncovered

**Author's Note:**

> i heard "we don't talk anymore" by charlie puth ft selena gomez on the radio at work and i couldn't stop thinking about ibayuzu
> 
> i love to be sad and not beta my work

The hat is covered in a heavy layer of dust. It hasn't been moved from the back of the closet, forgotten to the passage of time. Its camouflage pattern is faded, a tear in the back of it. Dirt stains a patch of it, from when it was knocked off its owner's head from a fistfight. The subsequent bloodstain from its owner's broken nose is almost gone. Blood is stubborn.

Clothing ruffles, the sound of hangers scrapping the bar hurt his ears. With an 'oomf', Ibara grabs a box full of meaningless objects and pulls it out of the closet. He shoves it to the side, accidentally bumping into Nagisa's bed. Nagisa doesn't move, deep in sleep and immovable until he decides to rise. Ibara raises a brow as he glances at him, but lets him be as he reaches into the closet again.

Box after box, he finally clears out the floor of the closet. With a delighted grin, rolling his shoulders, he's happy to find his strength is still with him. He never was the strongest person around, but military conditioning made it so he could handle a few full boxes. If he had less self-control, he'd pat himself on the back. Good job, he wants to praise himself, moving all of these without needing help. In the past, before training of both the military and idol types, he'd of had to ask Yuzuru to move the-

His grin falls.

The hat falls from the top of the box as its owner tips the box on its side and the contents spill onto the floor. Old notebooks full of stories and doodles, an old military uniform, a stray shoelace. A cloud of dust puffs from the spillage and its owner sneezes. A hand waves, the other supporting his weight. It presses onto the carpet as he lowers himself. He sits on the hat, not even noticing.

It squishes under its owner's weight. The dust transfers from the fabric of the hat to the fabric of its owner's pants. The first touch it has had since being shoved into the box and stored to be forgotten about like a meaningless object holding no emotional attachment for its owner.

Ibara flips open one of the notebooks. After reading a few pages of his grand schemes from the past, he snorts and tosses it into the recycling bin he got from one of the teachers for this room cleaning. In goes another few notebooks, worldbuilding and character planning and plotting and doodling trashed without a second thought. In the trashcan next to the recycling bin does the stray shoelace find itself, soon joined by fake military badges. Ibara picks up the permanent marker from beside his thigh and he scribbles onto the identification card, crossing out his name and the military school's name. He tosses it in the trash, and then picks up the box to throw it into an empty space near his own bed.

The process continues. Ibara dumps a box on its side, sorts through its contents, trashes and recycles, and then tosses the box towards the foot of his bed. By the time he finishes, and hour has passed and the boxes are precariously stacked to a point where if a light breeze blew they'd fall onto Ibara's bed. The recycling bin overflows with sheets of paper, the trashcan full as can be.

Satisfied, Ibara shifts where he sits to stand up.

The hat again transfers dust, this time from its fabric to its owner's hand. Its owner lifts his hand, studying the dust before his eyes fall on the hat.

His satisfaction fades.

Ibara picks it up. His fingers run over the brim, exposing the faded camouflage. The dirt. The faded bloodstain. Each new feature that he uncovers, dusting them free with his fingers, the deeper his scowl gets. He should get rid of this too. He already threw his military uniform in the trash. This hat needs to go along with it. He lifts his arm to place the hat in the trash, but a sheet of paper on the floor catches his eye.

It fell from the recycling bin. Staring back is an abstract doodle. Ibara supposes it's a garden, flora encompassing the majority of the page. Curled up under one of the trees is what he assumes should be a dog. Wrapped around the tree branch above it is a snake. An apple precariously hangs just under the snake and just above the dog, which stares up at the snake. The snake stares back.

Ibara roughly crumples the paper up and tosses it behind him. He doesn't hear it land, doesn't see it land, doesn't care. He doesn't want to see it. He doesn't want to remember the day it was drawn, the snide remarks he made, the equally snide comebacks to his criticism. The way all the notebook pages not filled with his writings are filled with drawings that took place under equally annoying circumstances.

He hates being annoyed.

After he shoves the recycling bin and trashcan into the hallway and shuts the door, he notices Nagisa has awakened. His roommate looks at him with unreadable eyes, expression neutral. Ibara smiles, greets him, asks him how he slept.

Nagisa tells him he slept fine, and he was wondering why the boxes are empty and stacked. Ibara clarifies that it's cleaning day. Nagisa accepts it and falls onto his back again. The room is silent save for the noises Ibara makes as he returns the empty boxes to the closet. He readjusts the clothes to hang evenly in the closet. Once he likes how it looks, he closes the closet and wipes his hands on his pants. Dust smears into the fabric.

He sits on his own bed. Nagisa rolls onto his side and meets Ibara's eye.

"... where did the hat you're wearing come from? You should wash it-"

Ibara is keenly aware of how empty his hands are with the ghost feeling of the hat in them, and how heavy his head feels with the hat perched atop it, and how hollow his chest is when his heart constricts.

"-... and why does it say Fushimi? Your name is Saegusa."

The hat is no longer covered in dust.


End file.
